Art Songs, Riddles, and Sheila Davis

I'm kinda just channeling Sheila here.....hold on....here it comes....



I guess the fundamental question is: Do you want to connect to your audience?

If the answer is, "Yes" then you have to be clear. As soon as you lose your listener, you have short-circuited that connection.

Being cryptic leaves your audience behind. Listeners don't want to hear a song again and again because they didn't get it the first time. They want to listen again and again because they identify with the song's message strongly. The songs that have the greatest effect on us are the ones that speak for us, the ones we can say "Yeah, I know what you mean" to.

Let's take another look at the Werth song about "she".

Is the song about the train? About longing for earlier times? What is the attitude of the song? We don't know who "she" is or what the song's point of view is about "her" so we don't know how to feel. We feel nothing. We're left with a puzzle, a game. Not what your typical listener comes to hear at a concert. Even if we still care what's going on in this song, we'd have to hear it again to have a chance at understanding it. Hardly the hallmark of successful writing. Isn't the goal of writing to convey a message?

Here's an alternate approach to a song about a train:


Clack, clack, clack, black metal cars on an iron track

Nine hundred tons, oh where do you go?

There's more to this big old world than

This little town, I know


It's still a song about a train and wondering what's out there in the world. We know where we are and what is being talked about, not because we are told directly but because we can hear the train, see the line of cars, feel the weight of the cargo, wonder about where it might lead. Furthermore, we easily detect an attitude of the singer about feeling trapped in a small town (the train is tangible evidence that something bigger is out there). We can orient ourselves. The difference is that it is clear. We are along for the ride.


I'm not saying the lyric I've indicated here is better, just different. It does seem to me, though, that a riddle (which his text is) would be right at home in a book on word puzzles, or perhaps in a poem format. After all, the solution or resolution of tension for a listener/reader is what brings satisfaction. This requires several readings or hearings as the case may be (thus your class activity). Further study is required. What satisfaction does the listener of the Werth song experience after hearing a song that he doesn't understand? There is no "aha" moment. It goes by in real time and we are left just wondering.

A song that requires a briefing or debriefing may beg the question, "Am I working in the right format for what I am trying to accomplish?"

One final thought: If the song had to exist as a riddle, it could possibly work if the listener knew right up front what the idea was. For example:

I'm a riddle, can you solve me?...

Yeah, I know...hokey...



The next thing is: What do you want to say?